Private Jet

HOUSTON - The gulf between Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard became literal Friday, with NBA officials placing the Lakers stars on opposite sides of a giant hotel ballroom for All-Star media interviews. There was no underlying message, subtle or otherwise. Bryant and Howard were stationed in those spots because that's where league officials had set up streaming video feeds. The teammates were also on different ends of the emotional spectrum, Bryant remaining upbeat as he discussed the Lakers' struggles while a dour Howard conceded he wasn't enjoying himself on the court as much as he had earlier in his career.

It appears skier Lindsey Vonn and golfer Tiger Woods are getting serious about their romance, with the two spending more and more time together in recent weeks. Earlier this week, Woods let Vonn use his private jet to return to her home after she suffered a knee injury during the world ski championship in Austria, which many took as the first public sign of their relationship. After all, you don't usually lend your private jet to just anyone. I certainly don't. Now, according to Us magazine, Vonn and Woods have met each other's families and Vonn gave Woods' kids a ski lesson as they spent Valentine's Day together.

SAN DIEGO - She married a fabulously wealthy man decades her elder, and became the first female mayor of San Diego. But when Maureen O'Connor left public life, she spent countless hours seated in front of video-poker machines. Over a nine-year period, she wagered an estimated $1 billion, including millions from a charity set up by her late husband, who founded Jack in the Box. That was the portrait that emerged in court Thursday as the frail former mayor tearfully acknowledged she skimmed more than $2 million from a charity founded by her late husband, Robert O. Peterson.

Somebody might want to tell Lindsey Vonn and Tiger Woods that the words "private" and "secret" might be synonymous in some contexts, but not in the case of private planes. Especially when the jet is reportedly owned by the most famous golfer in the world and the person supposedly boarding it is a well-known skier who was already garnering plenty of attention on that particular day because of a season-ending injury that occurred at the world championships in Austria. TMZ.com ran a photo Friday of a hooded blond on crutches -- allegedly Vonn -- boarding a private plane -- reportedly belonging to Woods.

Haven't been following Chris Brown's adventures while he's on probation? Never fear - a new motion filed Tuesday reads like a gossip-blog round-up of past excitement while also dropping the big news that the performer appears to have faked community service the L.A. court had allowed him to perform in his home state, Virginia. Yes, they say he faked it. Hate it when that happens. The D.A.'s office is asking that Brown's community-service claims be rejected due to what L.A. County Dist.

There were only a handful of tech-related commercials that ran during the broadcast of Super Bowl XLVII, but for better or worse they were memorable. Head and shoulders above its peers was GoDaddy's " Perfect Match " commercial, featuring company spokeswoman and NASCAR driver Danica Patrick, model Bar Refaeli and a computer nerd. In the commercial, Patrick explains that Refaeli, representing GoDaddy's sexy side, and the nerd, representing the company's smart side, make the perfect match before the two come together for a 10-second kiss that some may find repulsive.

Lady Gaga has it out for her former aide, Jennifer O'Neill, who sued Mother Monster in 2011 for unpaid overtime she believes she's owed. "She's just -- she thinks she's just like the queen of the universe," Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, said in a six-hour deposition in the case obtained by the New York Post . "And, you know what, she didn't want to be a slave to one, because in my work and what I do, I'm the queen of the universe...

The Miami Heat plays on Super Bowl Sunday and LeBron James isn't happy about it. Sunday's game at Toronto begins at 11 a.m. PST, and will be over well before the Super Bowl, which begins at 3:30 p.m. PST. But the Heat players will miss part, if not all, of the game because they'll be on the team plane headed back to Miami, and the private jet lacks satellite television and Wi-Fi service, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. ...

"A Dark Truth" is a would-be eco-thriller as forgettable as its generic title. Writer-director Damian Lee might have thought he had something to say about Third World water rights but this whole wan enterprise has little to impart except that - wait for it - greed is bad. And so is this unconvincing potboiler. Andy Garcia stars as Jack Begosian, an ex-CIA agent holed away in Toronto as a half-there family man and platitudinous radio talk show host. But when the co-heir (Deborah Kara Unger)

December 19, 2012 | By Ruben Vives and Adolfo Flores, Los Angeles Times

Jenni Rivera was remembered in death the same way she was celebrated in life: on an illuminated stage, with thousands of fans chanting her name. The singer, who was killed in a plane crash earlier this month, was honored Wednesday with what her family called a "celestial graduation," a musical memorial that packed the Gibson Amphitheatre with 6,100 people and drew hundreds more outside. The more than two-hour farewell could have been mistaken for a concert, if not for the crowd's tears and the ruby-red casket on stage.